If you try to visit the URL for wine review website Corkd, you’ll automatically get rerouted to porn site Adult Friend Finder (obviously NSFW). We’re not sure how long this has been the case, but we’re not the only ones noticing.
What’s weird about the redirect is that there’s a delay, so you’ll actually see the Corkd website for a second before it switches to the adult website. If the domain name would just be pointed to the Adult Friend Finder site, that wouldn’t happen. We’re trying to find out if there is malicious intent at play here, or that the site owners configured the redirect intentionally for whatever reason.
Update: the site now reads a message that they’ll be back shortly, so it was definitely a malicious act. We’re confirming this with the owners of the site right now.
We’ve had incoming tips before about Corkd going the way of the dinosaur, but apart from the fact that it’s been quite some time since the site received an update, we didn’t really see any reason for us to deadpool them, also considering the fact that the company never responded to our requests for information.
Update 2: Web celeb Gary Vaynerchuk’s WineLibrary actually acquired Corkd back in May 2007, we’ve contacted him to see if he can tell us more about what happened. This Twitter message of Gary Vee kind of says it all, though.
Update 3: see Gary Vaynerchuk’s video comment below.
Update 4:
This is probably the least confident post I’ve read. Who are you passive aggressive apologizing to?
Garyvee is a great guy – very interesting to hear talk, but isnt it about time that Corkd was deadpooled?
Robin you wrote the article about deadpooling Sneakerplay and said “Keeping the website online … while not actively trying to grow… is effectively the same as discontinuing the social network” preceeded by “For now, we’re putting Sneakerplay into the deadpool.”
Gary just said that the site hasnt been actively worked on in over a year so can they have equitable treatment?
No. Listen to his video comment below. He has plans for Corkd.
Plans for Corkd? LOL. Its been down for half a week – which considering its a 8-10 hours fix, as per Gary’s tweet, really shows just how much they care about this product.
Despite his smooth response its irresponsible to treat users data in this way. I’ve been trying to extract my reviews from their site for months but their CSV export is broken and they never responded to my emails to fix it (because as Sarah suggests above the site has been abandoned)
the site now reads a message that they’ll be back shortly, so it was definitely a malicious act. We’re confirming this with the owners of the site right now.
Oops, im being childish, but FIRST comment, YA!
Actually second LOL
not really the first but good try =) and btw what’s up with all the sites getting hacked lately? try to keep people’s eyes off something?
Create or join a TechCrunch chat group at http://groups.im/
Works fine for me..
They’re just not doing input validation- someont threw an iframe that’s redirecting into a user-inputted field. Site/DB hasn’t been hacked, but their code is sloppy.
I’ve tried to interact with their founders before and found them unresponsive.
Just like your grammar?
Brian – well said, clearly some XSS type injection attack.
i get none of the above, but simply a page with the following link made available: http://tv.winelibrary.com/
If a site that nobody visits gets hacked, does it make a sound?
From the description, it sounds like a XSS attack. Big deal, just needs some user-input validation to sanitize user content.
Relatively simply hax; should have been pen-tested by Webmaster and security engineer.
~Joe
Gary Vaynerchuk needs someone to bring the Rails Thunder !
http://twitter....uses/1103058455
Hehe thx.
Anyone else noticed how Gary Vaynerchuck (or however he spells his name) ripped off the look of his site???
Corkd was purchased (purchasd?) by Garyvee’s Wine Library sometime early in 2008 or late 2007?
May 07, actually, updated the post with that info.
Has anyone noticed that when you go there the redirect is gone and the page says that their wating Wine Library TV and has a missing logo below. If you look at the page title is says “Cork’c is moving”.
oh and Daves… WL was designed by the guy who started Corkd.
Has anyone noticed that when you go there the redirect is gone and the page says that their watching Wine Library TV and has a missing logo below. If you look at the page title is says “Cork’d is moving”. So they are moving and not doing site maintenance.
corkd thingy.. {seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/aJjrIM3pxD_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:”corkd thingy.. ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/kg7nPBR81y”}}}
Best website owner response to a hack, ever. Honest, personal, humble. Great stuff!
Great job Gary, great response.
Seems like a scam to promote his site.
“Best website owner response to a hack, ever. Honest, personal, humble. Great stuff!”
quoted for truth.
Most annoying human being. Ever.
oh man, awesome.
If the hack went down as described in the post, I’m guessing it was a meta refresh slipped in the site through some form of UGC. I have seen this before. If this is the case, it’s as simple as filtering out the HTML.
so much to learn from the way you handled this Gary {seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/rOmUxZQeVD_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:”so much to learn from the way you handled this Gary ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/ZlOi4nSHWu”}}}
I agree Gary handled it well. I also think it’s important to pat you on the back for saying as much – it’s also good when others recognize and applaud the efforts of someone. It shows you have class too. Good for both Gary and Andrew for taking the time to show how positive reactions are the order of the day.
Great Response Gary. Thanks for taking the time to post a video and I hope they didn’t actually cause any lasting damage!
http://www.firewallscript.com would have likely helped
That sucks that they got hacked. Times are getting tough, so bad things are going to happen more often.
Not sure I follow. Times are tough, yes. Therefore you will get hacked more? Hm…
It’s been proven that malicious activity increases in a depressed economy. People become more desperate… steal, cheat, lie their way to riches.
They did it on purpose to get some quick revenue from AFF.
Or just a TC link.
(probably not, getting redirected to AFF is probably not going to build much goodwill)
Stand-up response. Take your lumps, admit your mistake, learn from it, move forward.
Hah, pure class all the way. Gary never ceases to amaze me.
Methinks getting “hacked” is the new “gone viral.”
Hopefully they get the site back up soon. It would be a shame if they lost all the SEO juice that site has (Google any brand name wine).
I do respect the way Gary handled this. Honest, humble, but also not giving away the vulnerability.
No matter what Gary makes a video about it’s always interesting.
Hope you get that fixed soon
I noticed there is a lot more hacking for purely monetary purposes.
My AdWords account was compromised a couple months back to the tune of $20,000 … they used my account to buy $20k worth of ads to some web page rigged up with nothing but Adsense ads. This happened over just 2 days before I caught it.
Luckily Google was very very helpful and refunded my money right away after they looked into it… bottom line is, be careful out there!
SHAM-WOW!!
Great response Gary! I love how this guy gets in there and gets things done.
Can you IMAGINE if every company was this transparent and responded like this? What a world that would be!
“Hey, this is Steve Jobs on seesmic. Sorry about the semi-boring keynote at Macworld. We promise more and exciting things coming for 2009. Stay tuned!”
That would rock! And it would only take him a few seconds. Just imagine.
Can’t wait for the new and improved Cork’d Gary. Keep up the good work!
‘BIG UP’ to Gary Vaynerchuk!
Great response. Way to be upfront & face the public (seesmic).
Way to GO Gary! Great response, you managed it like very few PR agencies would have managed it.
Hope you can rest a bit now
Thumbs up also to Loic and team @ Seesmic.
Kudos to TechCrunch for picking up on this. I posted the Tweet that you referenced and was surprised that the wine blog community mostly missed it. I guess it shows how hard it is to keep up with the volume of messages on Twitter.
Very Web 2.0, lots of talking, excitement, and P.R. Site is still down, no good operational structure, no patch or version management. It seems to be a theme with a lot of these little 2.0 shops. Great ideas killed by horrible implementations.
if people aren’t using cork’d and it’s not being actively developed, where are people going for the functionality cork’d offered? snooth is out there but is there anything else?
Gary Vaynerchuk? Gary Vayner-schmuck, more like!
What a tool!
Why don’t all you sheep see him for what he is?
Completely agree… this guys has always been a self promoting joke to me.
James same goes for you dude, wish u the best!
Dave would love to buy u a beer to show u who I really am, sorry my DNA doesn’t work for you, I am more then aware I am not for everyone…But I promise to try to show everyone I can in person who I am, my mom did too good of a job for me to screw it up! Sorry man!
@Scott: Adegga is way better than corkd, has a community and is actively being developed
Check out CorkSavvy.com – has as virtual wine cellar and wine journal. Also connects to Facebook.
Have always like this dude! But I never knew he did a lot more than just swish the wine and spit in the bucket. Smart guy.
Haha his followup video was really funny
Great stuff
Haha his followup video was really funny
Great stuff
WOW! Great response! Gary is a true pioneer in this industry! Kudos to ya!
i don’t agree with Dano for patting you on the back. Why on EARTH would you think for a second that someone would do this “intentionally”? Good on Gary but jeeez, enough with the suspicion on your part…
I “loled” at the title
World’s not Perfect {seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/s1slqgHfPg_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:”World’s not Perfect ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/PxFwbJDFxk”}}}
This is a great example of how to respond – I wish more brands would get involved in social media like this. I would love to see a brand like Primark come and talk about something that is negatively reported on!
Gary,
As usual, you demonstrate the transparency and openness this medium demands. Awesome case study, awesome response. Thanks as always.
Leigh
I like very much the writings and pictures and explanations in your adress so I look forward to see your next writings.
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Thank you!